


Surrender

by persephone20



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-18
Updated: 2014-01-28
Packaged: 2017-10-24 17:57:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 20,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/266287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persephone20/pseuds/persephone20
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seven years into the future, Elena is a young woman working as a waitress in L. A. when Damon finds her. Alternate title: 'Damon Complains To Alaric About the Girlfriend That Ran Away From Them Both and How He Needs To Get Her Back'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

She's working as a waitress when Damon walks in. So many years have passed, but he looks exactly the same.

"Oh god," Elena says, before she can stop herself, or remember that she is no longer the 17 or 18 year old girl in love with two brothers and without a scrap of experience to tell her how to deal with that.

"What?" Amy, her co-waitress, looks in the direction that Elena can't make herself stop staring in. Amy whistles a low sound in pity, or in appreciation of Damon's good looks. "Bad break-up?" she asks then, obviously expecting someone as good looking as Damon can't possibly be monogamous.

Elena finds herself wishing there was a simple answer to that.

"Oh, could you take my tables?"

"I thought you'd never ask." Amy makes a pantomime of fanning herself down. Plainly, an unfaithful ex of a friend isn't something Amy's worried about. Or maybe she's thinking of handing out some payback for the imagined slight. Elena just hopes Damon doesn't take it into his head to take her home, fuck her, then drink from her.

Elena thinks she has to give Amy one hell of a heads-up before her friend goes back to that table a second time.

Taking over Amy's tables isn't too hard. There is one elderly couple there and a mother with three brats. Business isn't booming in the middle of a weekday; not until another half hour passes, and lunch rush hits, will they become busy.

Seven years ago, Elena left Mystic Falls without ever looking back. The only person she still wrote to was Jeremy and, she supposed since Alaric read those letters, Alaric too. Bonnie, Caroline, Tyler, Matt, they were all just figments of her imagination, figments of a time she wouldn’t go back to.

Stefan... he was a little more tough, more like a nightmare from which she sometimes couldn’t wake up. On some days, when she’d started working her first job waitressing, she’d gotten yelled at for staring into space, too busy thinking of everything that had passed between her and Stefan from the start and trying to figure out if there had been any other way to end up than the way that they had.

And Damon... Damon had just been someone she’d let go because she couldn’t stand to be near his brother anymore. Like he’d gotten caught in the crossfire, without any regards at all to whatever feelings he may or may not have had towards her. When the time had come to leave, she hadn’t even said goodbye to him before doing so.  
Honestly, she’d been too embarrassed by her behaviour then to ever so much as ask Jeremy, or again more likely Alaric, how Damon was doing.

And now he’s here, sitting in the middle of random L. A. diner which was supposed to be the random diner in which she get lost and has no one from her old life ever come find her.

Amy comes back to her. There’s a confused expression on her face and, for a minute, Elena wonders if she was already too late in her warning, whether Amy has already been Compelled. She’s lifting her fingers to unclip the bracelet that’s the new house for the vervain Stefan gave her since she could longer bear to wear anything Stefan gave her.

“Hey, it was your birthday last week, wasn’t it?”

Elena puts on her face the easy going smile that Amy expects to see there, the smile that’s been there every day that Elena has come to shifts, pretending to be no more than just some girl coming to a big city from small town America.

“Yeah, it was.”

“And I forgot to give you your present then. Here.” Elena holds out her bracelet. She knows the vampire rules, she knows where to get herself more vervain, where to buy another locket or other piece of jewellery to put it in. She’ll do that straight after her shift. Right now, the more important object is giving this bracelet to Amy.  
Amy has the bracelet in her hand and is looking at it as though it’s an exceptionally rare treasure.

“It’s... beautiful,” she says, looking up briefly to Elena again. “It’s really mine?” She’s putting it on as she speaks, and Elena can’t help a soft sigh of relief at seeing it.

“It suits you,” Elena says, just as the kitchen staff impatiently press on the bell to summon one of them out to bring food to a table. “Oooh, better go!” she says.

The food for the elderly couple comes out first, and then the three kids sized meals and a burger and chips for the mom. Elena knows the exact moment that Damon looks at her for the first time. She is pouring a coke for one of the kids, the one that started crying when his mom told him no coke because he was too hyper, then gave in when he wouldn’t stop crying.

His gaze is like some sort of electric charge on her skin, and Elena knows it’s pretty dumb to fancy there was an actual physical reaction, other than lust, happening but still...

It’s been a while since she’s had sex. The last person was an off and on again flame, more close friend than boyfriend, who she stopped messing around with when he last left down. He’d be back again, he assured her of that. It’s just the waiting time in between. Elena isn’t a guy, but she still has needs.

No surprise, really, that seeing Damon there makes her aware of them. There’d always been some attraction between them.

Elena swears inventively when she realises that the coke has spilled out of the top of the glass she’s pouring it into, and has splurted onto her apron.

“Damnit,” she mutters under her breath, not daring to make any louder expletive than that with the kids not far from the counter.

“You okay with that?” Amy is by her side again. Apart from taking a couple of drinks out to a couple of friends around the same age as Amy and Elena, there isn’t really much else for her to do since checking in at Damon’s table. It isn’t like he even ate. And, if it’s too early to have a drink on his own, then what is he even doing here?

“Yeah, just...” Elena shakes her head, before lifting her gaze up towards Damon, instead of Amy. That’s a mistake. She knows it as soon as she does it, for he is looking directly back at her. Amy has given him a glass of water, Elena sees, or, at least, they serve every table with a carafe and glasses of water, so...

He lifts his glass up in his hand and salutes her with it.

Which just makes Elena stumble.

“Jesus, Elena, you’re never this clumsy.” Knowing that Damon can hear every word that Amy says doesn’t make Elena’s clumsiness any better.

“I just need to... Could you take this out to the table with the kids?” she asks, woefully aware that she is not pulling her weight so far this shift, and unable to compose herself to do better on the spot. “I just need to clean myself up.”

“Yeah, sure, whatever you need,” Amy replies helpfully.

Elena tries to wait until the door to the staff washroom is closed behind her is closed before falling apart more than she already has been. She lifts a hand to her forehead and moves over to the mirror. Her whole face and neck are flushed. She can see the solid beating of her heart in the vein that’s popping in her neck. Great. Calm down, Elena, she coaches herself. Just calm down. Just...

Elena doesn’t know why, but she feels like she wants to cry in here.

Minutes later, there’s a soft tapping on the door and Amy’s voice on the other side of it.

“Are you okay in there, Elena? We’ve got some customers coming in out here. It’s starting to get kinda busy.”

Elena nods her head, before realising that Amy can’t see that. “I’ll be right out,” she calls. A couple of deep breaths, and Elena tells herself again that she doesn’t have the time to lose it right now. Tonight, later, when she’s alone in her room, she can have a bit of a cry about this latest reminder about how terrible her life has become.

When she comes out of the restroom, and comes to face customers again, she finds that Damon has gone, and his table is being replaced.

*

“See you tomorrow, Amy.”

Elena hangs up her apron. It’s still light outside and, due to the early finish today, there’ll be a jeweller open that will cater to her needs. Not that she couldn’t have dealt with it if there hadn’t been. It wouldn’t have been the first time she’d worn vervain in her bra.

With one last glance towards the table Damon had occupied that morning, Elena exits the diner. She wonders whether she’ll be able to think of that table as anything other than ‘Damon’s table’ again.

Having taken a leaf out of Zack Salvatore’s book, Elena has a pot plant of vervain in her house, which she carries around with her every time she moves. So it is that, after stopping in by the jewellers, she opens the locket of her new bracelet and crumbles up vervain to put into it.

When her mobile phone rings, she jumps, which causes her to lose hold of the vervain she’d been holding.

A quick check at her mobile phone tells her that the caller is Alaric. She’s relieved, and she’s sure it shows in her tone when she answers.

“Ric, you scared me. It’s not like you to call.”

“Well, yeah, sorta what I was thinking. Thought I’d give a call to check in.”

Elena smiles. “You know, you’re not my guardian anymore. Haven’t been for a very long time.”

She hears Alaric made a sort of ‘pfffft’ noise that comes across very clearly on their connection. “Like I was ever very good at that. Let’s say I’m calling you as a friend.”

“I suppose we can say that,” Elena says, a little tongue in cheek. She’s already bending over to pick up the fallen vervain. “So, what’s up?”

“Something has to be up for me to call?”

Elena just lets the silence speak towards that.

A moment passes, then another, then, “Okay, there is something.” Elena grins. “I got this strange phone call from Damon this afternoon.”

Elena almost drops her phone this time. All traces of her grin are wiped from her lips. “A call from Damon?” She hopes her voice doesn’t sound so strangled on the other side of the line.

“Yeah.” A single word, and yet from that she can tell that her voice sounds exactly as strangled as she feels. “Want to explain what’s going on?”

“There’s nothing to explain!” She’s too high pitched, and her words all come out on top of each other. Alaric’s patient, and he gives her a moment to gather herself before she speaks again. “He came into the diner I work at today. That’s all.”

“He didn’t speak to you?” Alaric sounds surprised by this. He has a right to be.

“Well... no. There wasn’t really a chance to. It was my work.”

Elena hopes that Ric will buy that the diner where she works is somehow very differently run to the way that the Mystic Grill is run back home.

He allows it to pass, or at least lets it pass without comment. Which actually leads Elena to be worried. “Should I be concerned? What did he call you to say?”

“Just that he had found you.” Elena can hear from his tone that he’s either rubbing his forehead with his thumb and forefinger, or else reaching for a drink. “I told him to lay off, because we’re both respecting your wishes.”

“So, he’s just going to stalk me then.” No, actually, that made perfect sense. There was a reputation for that among vampires, and Damon was a vampire to give vampires reputations.

“I told him to leave you be.” But Alaric sighs, and Elena knows why. Anyone can tell Damon to do something; whether he chooses to do it or not is completely on Damon’s head.

“Thanks, Ric,” Elena says. “For the heads up.”

“Always.” There’s a pause, like Ric wants to say more. Then, “Is there anything else you need? Anything I can help with?”

“I’m not destitute, and I know how to look after myself,” Elena says but, secretly, she’s warmed by this evidence that he still cares.

“Right then. Look after yourself, Elena.”

“You too.”

She hesitates over hanging up the phone immediately, like holding onto the phone and seeing the seconds pass will somehow let her hold onto this connection with Alaric. Jeremy must have given Alaric the new number that she’d gotten for work call backs and emergencies. Three seconds show themselves to pass on the mobile’s screen, at which point Alaric hangs up.

Elena puts the phone down. It’s been a day for blasts from the past. Elena wonders whether she ought to consider moving on again. Her heart pounds as she lets her thoughts dwell on Alaric and Damon, figures of a very emotional past, but, eventually, she resumes the task of the vervain that she’d been in the middle of when Alaric called.

*

There’s no sign of Damon at her work the next day.

The whole day, Elena feels like she’s holding her breath, waiting for Damon to walk in, wondering what she’s going to say, how she’s going to react, how he’s going to react.

The close of the day feels very anti-climactic.

“You doing okay?” Amy asks her. “You’ve been real quiet today.”

“I might be coming down with something,” Elena replies, because she knows that if she needs to take emergency time off, this’ll stand her in good stead.

Amy just nods, and says, “See you tomorrow,” and, just then, a familiar face comes crashing through the door.

“I’m back!” he says, and Elena’s heart removes itself from her throat and lowers itself back to its rightful position.

“Cody!” This is the best thing Elena needs right now. Her solid not-a-boyfriend but more than friends has come back to town again, like promised, and he’s the perfect thing to take her mind off where she’s come from and put it back squarely in the life she belongs to right now.

She moves around the counter, still wearing her apron, though she’s forgotten about that now, and gives him a huge hug. He is taller than her by quite a bit so, when she puts her arms around her shoulders, she is up on her tip-toes to do so.

“When did you get in?” she asks.

“About an hour ago. Hey, a coffee for my troubles?”

“Troubles?” Amy scoffs openly, even as she sets about making the requested coffee. Cody had worked here for a short time, before his first stint away from L. A., and so they were pretty sure that he could still get away with being given a free coffee because he was ‘staff’. “You’ve got a charmed life. If you ever get into trouble, I’m going to choke in surprise,” she says, handing him his coffee.

Cody inclines his head in amused agreement. “May it always be so!” he replies.

“Hot chocolate for me?” Elena asks, untying her apron and going back around the counter to hang it on the hook.

Amy nods, and makes them both a hot chocolate. The diner is quiet, and the night staff will be coming on to take Amy off any minute. Till then, Amy—whose shift went for another half hour after Elena’s—has to at least make some pretence of keeping an eye on the rest of the diner.

“So how was... where did you go this time?”

“Montana. It was... dry. Glad to be back though.”

He reaches to take Elena’s hand, which is until then propping up her chin. Elena grins, even as she blushes knowingly.

“How long are you staying this time?” she asks.

“Couple of weeks.” Cody winks as Amy comes by them with two hot chocolates. “Sure I can’t convince one of you lovely ladies to come with me next time?”

Elena’s usual refusal is on the tip of her tongue but, this time, she’s not so sure of her refusal to go away with him. Actually, a couple more weeks here, with Cody, and then vanishing to the next place, seems the best way of managing her recent Damon sighting.

Amy, of course, has no troubles with mouthing her usual refusal.

“What, and give up this coushy job? I think not.”

Elena smiles. Cody catches the fact that Elena is yet to say anything. He sits forward in his chair, leaning closer towards her. “What about you, Elena?”

He’s blonde, with blue eyes, and his lips do this delightful thing to her belly when he smiles. In some ways, he reminds her of Matt, except he’s not so stable as Matt ever was. That’s okay. Elena doesn’t want stable. The longer she doesn’t say anything, the cheekier that smile gets, and the more she’s mindful of the cheeky things those lips and his tongue can do to her.

She gets her own very coy smile on. “Maybe,” is all she gives him.

“Maybe!” he crows, as though he’s just gotten her to agree, and maybe he has. Certainly her ‘maybe’ is closer than any other answer she’s ever given to him.

Amy just grins, and shakes her head, as though they’re both mad. One of her replacements come through the front door around then, giving Amy the chance to pay a little less attention to customers, and a little more attention to both of them.

“What are your plans for tonight, first night back in the big city,” she asks.

Cody tips his head, as though pretending to think about what his answer will be, even as his fingers clench around Elena’s. She stifles a little gasp as that clenching brings forth a similar clenching between her thighs.  
She knows she’s going to have to be patient, though. Running out on Amy would be rude, since Cody is her friend too. And Cody, for all his playboy charms, isn’t an ass. It’s part of the reason why Elena likes him. So, as Cody lays out his plans to bar hop and drink until they all pass out, Elena squeezes her legs together and tries not to think of the things she’d like to do that are just going to have to wait until tomorrow.

She winces. Tomorrow afternoon. After work. No way that she’s going to be able to convince Amy she’s anything but totally healthy anymore.

*

It’s _Charmaine’s_ , their third bar for the night, and the three of them are still going strong.  
If, by going strong, one means going loudly, happily, with many drinks, a whole lot of bar nuts, and a couple of Australian tourists that Cody had said simply must join them.

Elena is trying to make sure that she can make a straight line to the bar, because she knows that they aren’t going to serve her there if she can’t. About halfway there, standing up lets her know that her bladder needs some relief. That’s okay. All the more room to be able to fit in more drinks, Elena thinks, on her way to detouring.

The bar seems incredibly dark, after the bright fluorescent lights of the bathroom. Elena squints as she tries to remember which direction her table with her friends is. When she gets tugged by the arm, she laughs and falls into her friend’s arms.

“You saved me!” she informs him. “I was almost lost!”

Her arms wrap around him and before she knows it, he is kissing her. It’s hard to think about being rude and leaving Amy up by herself when they start doing this. He’s picked up some new movies since the last time he was in L. A., she thinks, and likes it. Pressing herself up against him, until a straw couldn’t fit between the two of their bodies, Elena kisses him with all the passion in her, and he responds in kind.

If he didn’t seem quite so tall as she was used to, she told herself that it must just be that the floor of the bar was uneven. If he smelled differently to what she expected, there were so many smells around the bar, she was probably just picking up someone else’s. If his hair felt different under her hands...

Elena pulls back, and squints, actually looking at the person who tugged on her arm and pulled her into a dark corner on her way out of the ladies’ room.

At first, her brain refuses to believe what her eyes are telling her.

“Damon...?” she utters. The name is all but lost under the noise of the bar and, if she’d been wrong and just seeing Damon there where Cody actually was, she would have been able to convince him he’d misheard her.

The tip of his head tells her that, not only has he heard her, but her perception of him is completely correct. His teeth are very white in the gloom of the bar.

“Man, you _are_ happy to see me,” he says teasingly.

And Elena can’t deny that, because the throbbing between her legs hasn’t gone away because she’s realised that the man she thought she was kissing is actually someone else. If anything, the pressure becomes more insistent. Damon’s eyes grow more slitted.

“What are you doing here?” She’s stalling for time, trying to make sense of this awfully awkward situation.

Damon’s eyebrows waggle. “Didn’t seem to be something you were too fussed about a moment ago,” he replies. But he’s smart enough that he doesn’t attempt to move in on her a second time.

A first time, Elena amends to herself. It was her who pounced the first time.

“Oh god,” she says, and suddenly she feels like she needs to grab onto something and hold on tightly. All of her drinks are suddenly catching up on her.

And this is not the way she expected to catch up with Damon for the first time in seven years.

She feels his attention move sharply from her about a second before she feels Cody’s soft touch against her back.  
“Elena?” His voice is slurring, but he’s still conscious and aware of people around him. Nobody was finding him kissing some man from his past in a dark corner. Elena tries to breathe deeply as _that_ mental image filters through her consciousness. “Are you okay?”

Elena looks up to see Cody and Damon sizing each other up. Oh, she knows she’s way too drunk to be dealing with this.

“Take me home?” There is most definitely a question on the end of that. Not so much that he will take her home; that had been more or less established at the beginning of the night. But the ‘now’ of the statement is a question.

Cody looks down at her from Damon. Only Elena catches the sight of words and actions that Damon is holding in check as Cody keeps one hand against the small of her back, and takes one of her hands with his other hand.  
Elena’s gaze lingers on Damon a moment longer, before she allows Cody to draw her away, and back to wherever it is that he’s staying right now.

*


	2. Chapter 2

“Can you believe it? Went home with him!”

Damon is pacing back and forth in the apartment that he picked up the minute he found out where Elena was working. A long suffering Alaric hangs on to the other end of the line. He has papers to grade, and a council meeting he needs to get to after that, but he knows that neither one of these things is going to happen until Damon is finished with his ranting. That ranting has so far taken up the last ten minutes, since Damon rang up.

“Damon,” he says, when finally an opening in Damon’s ranting allows him the ability to cut in. “You remember that she wanted space.”

“She didn’t seem to want too much space last night! Seemed willing to get all up close and personal with anyone nearby and convenient.” He growls out these last words. That’s the worst part of this situation. He’s given her time. He’s given everything that she wanted, even if she never actually talked to him about any of it. And, for him to finally find her again, and her to escape

It was just too close to everything that had happened in Mystic Falls before she’d left.

“Damon.” That’s Alaric’s voice, sounding none too thrilled to be in this conversation either. Still, he’s the voice of sanity, and so it’s him that Damon calls.

“What?”

Alaric sighs. It’s clear that Damon left his own sanity behind several stops back. That’s not going to make this conversation go by any easier.

“She’s a grown woman. Who she wants to get ‘up close and personal’ with is none of our business.”

“But it _is_ ,” Damon hisses.

Alaric leaves silence as Damon’s only answer, waiting until, hopefully, Damon realises that there are no grounds for the comment he has just made.

Damon doesn’t make that acknowledgement in words but, several seconds later, he starts swearing vehemently. Alaric thinks this is a much harder conversation to have than the one he had with Elena a couple of days before.

“Just... don’t do anything stupid, okay?”

“Stupid?” Damon grins, but there’s no one there to tell him that it’s more a grimace than a grin. “Why would I do something stupid?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Insane jealousy spree? Deciding to get the competition out of the way? No, you’re right, I can’t imagine you doing any of those things.” Sarcasm is laid on so thick that it’s a wonder it doesn’t physically manifest on the mobile phone Damon’s holding.

“Never even occurred to me till you put them in my mind,” Damon tells him sweetly.

“Goodbye, Damon,” Alaric says, lest he get inadvertently blamed for anything else that Damon might be planning to do.

“Ric?” Damon’s tone of voice is completely different this time, and it holds Alaric off from ending the phone call right then.

“What?” He knows he’s going to regret this. He just knows.

“You don’t really think she’s fallen for this new guy, do you?”

He’s trying to put on a straight face, show himself and everyone else that he’s just fine with the way things are that, at last count, there wasn’t a woman around who could refuse his Damon-ly charms.

But, the truth was, at last count Elena refused every single one of those Damon-ly charms. And so Damon is feeling a little worried.

“I think that the only way you’re going to find out is to ask,” Alaric says, already sounding weary. “And I mean go up and ask properly. No stalking, no causing trouble for her, Damon. Just act like a reasonable human being for a change.”

Damon snorts. “Reasonable,” he says, as though that is the most unrealistic of all the claims. “Where are you while all this is going on, anyway?”

“Staying in Mystic Falls, keeping my job,” Alaric replies smartly.

“Oh,” Damon replies. “That all?”

“Goodbye, Damon,” says Alaric again, this time hanging up the phone before Damon has a chance to make any other calls to keep him on the line.

*

Damon can’t get out of his head the way Elena kissed him. Oh, they’ve kissed before. But Damon realises there’s a difference between a woman who’s just come into her sexual awakening, and a woman who has had a couple of years to perfect some of those experiences. Elena didn’t have the kind of experience that would lend a certain level of skill to it before. She has had now.

The awareness of his own hot headedness due to that all too brief kiss is what has kept him away from Elena’s diner for a couple of days. He takes Alaric’s advice to heart, even though Alaric sometimes doubts this. Why else call if he’s going to ignore it?

So Damon keeps himself out of any situations where he might be tempted not to ask Elena properly whether she’s fallen for the blonde, or to dispose of the boy whatever answer she gives him.

By the time Damon next comes to Elena’s work, he sees the tall blonde boy sitting in the window, flirting with Elena. Damon turns on his heel and storms away.

Two days later, Damon comes back. There’s no sign of blonde boy, but no sign of Elena either.

“Oh, it’s Elena’s day off,” her helpful friend answers, when he asks her. It’s the same friend who took care of his table when Elena first saw him.

Damon puts on his most charming smile, leaning against the counter to give the girl—Amy, her name tag read—every reasonable incentive to give him the information he wanted to hear.

“And where does Elena hang out on her days off?” he asks.

Something clouds over Amy’s expression, and she turns her face away under the premise of preparing a drink for a customer. “I’m not really sure I should be saying,” she answers. The drinks she prepares are put onto a tray and, as she lifts her gaze to him again, Damon stands in her way.

“You’ll tell me where she’ll be,” Damon says, using powers of persuasion, and Compulsion, to have his way.

He waits for the tell-tale sign of pupil dilation that comes before the answer he wants to receive, but a look of annoyance is all that crosses her face.

“No. I won’t. Excuse me.” Her voice is terse now, nothing like the almost flirty back and froing he had with her till a few seconds ago. He frowns, half turning his head to follow her as she takes drinks out to one of her tables.

You have got to be kidding. Damon pulls a face when he notices a locket on the bracelet Amy is wearing, and takes a quick guess as to what must be in it. Question was, had Elena given that to her as a gift before or after she knew Damon had come back into town?

He waits at the bar until Amy comes back to him. Without looking, he can hear her step falter for a second when she sees him sitting there. By the time she rounds in front of him, on her side of the bar, her step is steady and her expression steely.

“I’m sorry.” Again, laying on the charm quick. Even if he can’t get his answer out of her, it wouldn’t hurt to have one of Elena’s friends here on his side. Certainly he’d never had that in Mystic Falls. Maybe it would make all the difference out here. “We seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot.”

“Not really.” Amy looks as though she doesn’t much care which foot Damon is on, but she knows he was attracted to him before, so he just needs to get that going again the old fashioned way. “I just remembered it wasn’t a good idea to get involved with guys that have made trouble for my friends in the past.”

“Made trouble...?” Damon stumbles over the words and that, at least, gets a furrow of the brow from Amy. His reaction is authentic.

He can’t think of a single thing he’s done to her—well, after a certain point—that would have ‘made trouble’ for Elena. Unless she counts having her life saved by him over and again as ‘making trouble’.

When he comes back to himself, he realises the reaction his reaction has had on Amy. Quick to turn any opening to his advantage, Damon starts in cautiously. “ _I’m_ not the one in our home town that Elena moved to L. A. to avoid.”

With the gentle emphasis on the first word, Amy opens her lips in a silent ‘oh’. “Oh,” she repeats aloud. “So... she was just nervous that _anyone_ from her town knew where she was, then?”

Catch many more flies with honey than vinegar. Damon stamps down the smirk that had been able to settle on his features. It has the effect of making him look rueful, even as he widens his eyes. He knows his good looks will do the rest for him. “I don’t know. I haven’t had enough of a chance to talk to her. And then, she was so drunk when I saw her on the weekend.”

“Oh, you were there for that?” Amy looks as though she, too, has some reason to be embarrassed about that night. “Mm. Cody’s clearly a bad influence on us both.”

“Cody?” Damon makes that one word as uncomplicated and delicate as he can.

“Mm,” Amy says again. “The guy who rescued Elena when she’d had too much to drink.”

Mr. Tall and Blonde. So, he had a name. Damon nods once. “Good guy,” he says, because it’s expected that any guy looking after their drunken female friends will be seen that way.

“The best,” Amy agrees. “It’s good to have him back.” And then one of her customers draws her away from him, and Damon doesn’t mind because he’s gotten information from her that’s valuable, even if it’s not information on where she might be _right now_.

He imagines Elena rolling around in Good Guy Cody’s bedroom somewhere, and the thought leads him to grinding his teeth. Looking down, he realises that his fingers have fisted up on the bar. He draws his hands away, manages to clear his expression before Amy glances back at him again. He lifts his hand in a wave, and starts to head out.   
Nothing more for him here.

*


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Right, so apparently this is my NaNoWriMo 2011 now. More has been written. I'll try to keep it to just a chapter a day in order not to spam people.

Alaric only realises that he’s been staring solidly at a spot on the kitchen bench when he looks up to find Jeremy staring at him expectantly.

“I’m sorry, Jer,” he says, shoving a hand through his hair, and letting it fall where it will. He’s been better at this. Elena’s irregular phone calls have made things easier than they might otherwise have been after she left. Living with her brother and knowing he’d hear news of her that way had helped too. Of course, that wasn’t the only reason Alaric was still living with the 24 year old man who had long since moved on from high school and Alaric’s guardianship. The friendship he had with the young man was one that had helped to keep him together, and focused, in his bad moments when he would otherwise have simply disappeared into the drink.

Another several moments have passed without Alaric’s expression changing, or him entering the conversation. The look on Jeremy’s face is amused this time. Alaric doesn’t even bother apologising.

“Why don’t you go after her?” Jeremy asks, as though the answer is perfectly obvious and, since he knows exactly what is keeping Alaric’s mind so occupied, maybe the answer is obvious.

But Alaric shakes his head. “No,” he says. “She asked for space. And time to be able to get her life together, separate from all the Mystic Falls drama. Just because Damon has decided to put a spanner in the works...”

“Don’t you owe it to her to make sure the impact of his spanner is as small as it can be?” Jeremy squints, and it’s clear that he has just heard the statement as Alaric must have. “Uhh, I mean, since Damon’s there anyway...”

Alaric waves this add on explanation aside. “I know what you’re saying,” he says. “But...”

“But what?” Jeremy raises his eyebrows, and Alaric has the idea that no answer he’s going to give is going to be good enough for Elena’s little brother. “But she’s going to appreciate you being the bigger man back here as Damon screws up things over there, without anyone to hold him back?”

“Nobody holds Damon back,” Alaric says. It’s true. Years ago, before Elena left Mystic Falls, and a little while after, Alaric _had_ been someone Damon listened to. They had things in common and that created a bridge between the two men.

But, as the years had gone by, and it became clear that Elena wasn’t changing her mind and coming back after a brief sojourn in the land of normalcy, Damon had become steadily more reclusive. Both Stefan and Alaric did their best to bring him out of it in those early years. However, Damon couldn’t look at Stefan without seeing that he had had Elena first. It hadn’t been that way when Damon and Elena were together. Both brothers put aside Stefan’s past relationship for the sake of their brotherly closeness—appreciating it all the more since Klaus nearly got in between them. Apparently, it was okay for the two of them to get between them, but nobody else had that allowance. In Elena’s absence, though, that divide became impenetrable. The more Stefan beseeched and cajoled, the more stony Damon became, until the brothers shared the Salvatore boarding house and nothing more.

Damon and Alaric’s separation was different. Alaric had never registered in Elena’s romantic interests, however she had lived with him, and looked up to him and the continued contact from her that Alaric refused to give up had caused a divide of its own. It had come on slowly, until one night Damon had not accepted the peace offering of scotch at the local bar, and had whiled the night by without a single word spoken to his former best friend.

Alaric hadn’t been given the details on what had broken Damon and Elena up. Neither of them had volunteered it, and Alaric didn’t consider it worth his skin to ask either of them. They’d been good together, despite Alaric’s earlier concerns. But they were both of them as stubborn and sometimes vicious in defence of themselves when riled.

Jeremy doesn’t refute Alaric’s statement. Of anyone in Mystic Falls apart from, perhaps, Stefan, Jeremy would assume that Alaric had the best awareness of Damon’s head.

He says only, and simply, “You belong where they are, Ric.”

*

Alaric doesn’t know what brings him to the Salvatore boarding house. He knows Damon’s already with Elena, far from here. Maybe it’s solidarity of being with the other man that the two of them left behind.

Stefan answers the door, of course.

“You don’t have to knock, Ric,” Stefan says, already turning away from the front door and back into the house.

Alaric shrugs and follows into the house. Though Elena’s no longer in town, the house still belongs to her and, as such, no uninvited vampires can enter. As a result, physical locks are often forgone in the Salvatore boarding house.

“Have you heard any word from him?”

Alaric doesn’t need to specify ‘him’. There is only one person it could be.

Stefan reaches for bourbon, and Alaric is struck by the ‘Damonness’ of that habit. “Why would he contact me?” he says, with no small amount of bitterness in his voice.

“He contacted me,” Alaric says, without considering the way that this might be taken.

Stefan turns his head as if slapped, but gives no further reaction. “I see,” is all he says, and that quietly.

Alaric steels himself to move forward. “I need to know what he was like leading up to leaving here.”

Stefan meets Alaric’s gaze. “Much the same as the last four years, Ric.” There is a coolness that was never there before Klaus; Klaus’ legacy, Alaric thinks. “Didn’t say much. Then, one morning, he was gone.”

Alaric looks to the side, as if Damon might suddenly be standing there, having moved at vampire speed that his eyes can’t pick up. He’s not. Of course.

“You know he’s gone to find Elena.”

Stefan doesn’t deign to answer that with a comment.

“Jeremy thinks that I should go after him. Try to mitigate the damage.”

Stefan is still looking at him, that cold, detached look that isn’t _evil_ per se, more a question of why Alaric thought he should come to him. Alaric has to admit, he’s wondering that a little bit himself.

“You gonna go?” Stefan asks, as if it’s only a response to the most basic courtesy.

Alaric hadn’t thought this far ahead. But, he realises, looking back into Stefan’s gaze, that this is why he came here. He already knows the answer, now that it’s not being demanded of him.

“Yeah,” Alaric says, pursing his lips, because he’s sure that he sees a flash of pain cross Stefan’s eyes before the vampire looks away. “Yeah, I’m going.”

*

There is one more thing that Alaric needs to take care of before he can leave Mystic Falls in good conscience.

“It’s just for a couple of weeks. Maybe just a week,” Alaric says, explaining to Liz Forbes and Carol Lockwood why he won’t be at the next Council meeting.

Carol’s offering a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. Liz’s smile is more genuine. “You have to make sure that Elena’s okay. I understand. And... Damon? How’s he doing?”

Alaric knows, from this barely asked question, that Liz too misses Damon’s friendship, even though it didn’t disappear in a big explosion. Damon just... stopped attending Council meetings. And Alaric was about to do the same.

“Damon’s...” Alaric shakes his head. “Still Damon. Just looking out for Elena too, like always.” Alaric downplays his real reasons for leaving Mystic Falls. Maybe if it had just been Liz, he would have told the real reasons behind following Damon.

There are visible thoughts working behind Carol’s eyes and Alaric is glad that he’s left details vague, or downright incorrect. He pulls a benign smile to his features, knowing as he does it that this has the effect of making him look like a mischievous school boy. Somehow, he’s just never grown out of that appearance, and he’s not above using it to his advantage.

“Well,” Carol says, standing up. “We’d best not keep you waiting.”

Liz stands too. “Yes. You’ll keep me posted on anything I need to know?”

As Sheriff, this wasn’t an unreasonable thing for Liz to ask. Alaric nodded as he looked at her. Yes. Her he would tell if there was anything he needed to do.

“And you’ve got my number,” he says, “if anything comes up that I need to know?”

“Of course,” says Liz.

And then, that’s that. He runs out of excuses before leaving Mystic Falls. His bag is packed and in the backseat of his car. Jeremy has been informed and continues to be encouraging of Alaric’s decision to leave. Stefan he hasn’t spoken to again, but he doesn’t need to.

And then he’s starting down the drive to L.A. and giving Damon a call on his mobile to make sure he doesn’t need to book a faster plane trip to get him there.


	4. Chapter 4

**Elena.**

Elena thinks she is completely sated. A languid grin has placed itself on her lips, and there is absolutely nothing that she can do to dislodge it. That’s okay with Elena. She’s pretty good with it where it is.

“Ready for more?”

Elena coughs. “ _More_? How is your _dick_ not falling off?”

Cody laughs. “Oh, thank god. At the thought of having to go again, I thought I might actually unman myself.” He falls down onto the bed next to her, and for a while they are content to just lightly run hands and fingers over each others’ naked bodies. Both of them are too tired to make anything more of it than just that.

“Did you mean it?” Cody asks, out of nowhere and, because it’s out of nowhere, Elena just stares at him blankly.

“Mean what?” she asks, before turning her gaze back up to the ceiling.

“Going with me next time. I think it would be great. I mean, we’re pretty great, aren’t we, Elena?”

“Of course.” Elena grins widely. Her hand tiredly pats the dishevelled covers all around them. “Pretty hard to argue otherwise right now, isn’t it?”

Cody’s quiet for a minute, until Elena turns to look at him again. “What’s up, Cody?” she asks.

He’s not a complicated man. Actually, this is the first time Elena thinks they’ve ever headed off towards a serious conversation.

“I was just thinking of making it a little more official. I like you, Elena. I like you a lot. We have lots of fun together. And, if we’re thinking of travelling... I really think we could make this work, don’t you?”

Relationship. This was a relationship conversation. A serious conversation. Isn’t it possible to ever have one without the other? Elena is making the moves to sit up before she’s even thought her answer all the way through.

“W-what’s wrong with just keeping things the way they are?” she asks, wishing there was a sheet or something to clutch to her like there always were in the movies. Right now, she’s feeling like suddenly everything’s about to change, and she could really use the safety of a sheet to cover her stark nakedness in the face of this stark physical nakedness.

“And we can.” Cody says quickly. He sits up too, and extends a hand out in front of him, as if to stay her from running away. “That’s not what I’m saying. Just that... you don’t have a lot of things tying you here...”

“My job...” Elena starts.

“Apart from your job,” Cody acknowledges. “We could get another one for you in the next town we stay in. That’s what I do all the time. You should see my resume. Or... you know, not. But, we’re good together, aren’t we?”

“We’re good at being friends, Cody. Friends who have pretty good chemistry.” But Elena’s not sure that she even wants to have that if this is where it’s heading. She forgets about the lack in her sex life up to when Cody had come back, her craving for him, forgets everything apart from the travesty of everything to do with Stefan, and then leaving Mystic Falls after that.

“Hey...” Cody crawls across the bed, towards her side of it, where her face is firmly averted. “Where is this coming from? It’s okay. Look, come here...” And he pulls her into a gentle embrace that Elena doesn’t fight him on. But it isn’t the same. She’s staring absently towards the wall ahead of her, not even making out the soothing words Cody’s saying behind her.

Even the idea of getting out of this city has been taken from her, and she wants to blame all of it on Damon.

*

The next day at work is Amy’s day off, but the one after that Amy is all a-flutter about having talked to Damon again while Elena was having her day off.

“He did seem a little off to begin with,” Amy reminisces. “But, after that, I could see that he was quite charming. What’s the story between you two, anyway? You never did say.”

Elena tells some absent tale about a relative of Damon’s and lets Amy come to her own conclusions. When customers need her attention, Elena flocks to them too eagerly.

Around lunch time, Damon sidles into the diner, and Elena has her own opportunity to fawn—not fawn, but glance—over him as much as Amy has been doing.

For the first ten minutes, he doesn’t even look her way. Elena even wonders if he’s as aware of her as she is of him. Then, as she makes a cautious move towards his table, to ‘take his order’, Damon turns his gaze to her, and Elena can tell that he’s been just as conscious of her since he walked into the diner.

Elena takes a big breath and lets it out slowly.

“So, what can I get you,” she asks, determined to react for all intents and purposes, as though he’s no more than just another customer she needs to serve.

Damon’s brilliant, blue eyes have her captivated, even before he utters softly, “You.”

Elena’s jaw goes slack. For a minute, her mind goes blank, and she can’t think of a single thing to say to him. She feels put on the spot, as though everyone in the diner is staring at her. A quick glance around lets her know that that’s simply all in her head.

She forces herself to deal with just Damon.

“I’m sorry.” She all but chokes the words out. Unlike times in Mystic Falls, she can’t simply walk away from him when he delivers a line she doesn’t know how to respond to. Instead, she has to think quick on her feet. “That’s not on the specials board today...”

“But if I come back tomorrow?” Damon’s face is all innocence, but Elena knows for a fact that that innocence is a lie.

“What are you doing?” she hisses to him, after a moment of looking around. The words hardly come out loud, but she knows Damon will hear them quite clearly.

“Checking in on you,” he answers, with a small incline of the head. “Checking to make sure you’re alright. Hadn’t heard from you in a very long time.”

As though he didn’t know the reason for that. As though he had nothing to do with it.

“I’ve been writing to Jeremy.”

“And Alaric. I know.” The displeased expression on Damon’s face doesn’t shift at all.

Elena refuses to feel bad about this. “I asked for space, Damon. The chance to have my own life. As a recall, Alaric respected that, whereas you...”

She lets that sentence drift off. It’s quite clear, from his very presence here, how much he respected her wishes.

Except, to Damon, that’s not fair. “Maybe I wouldn’t be here if you had written to me every once in a while. Did you ever think of that?” No, of course not, his raised eyebrows seem to state.

Elena flushes. Again takes another glance around at the other customers in the diner. Still, none of them are looking their way. It is hardly believable. “I don’t know how to deal with having you here. Would you just... go?”

Her voice is more plaintive, more questioning, than she would have it if she was more in control of the situation. Beneath her gaze, Damon’s expression changes at this show of weakness. It’s not to take advantage, as Elena might have guessed. It’s in sympathy.

“We could be amazing.”

Elena shakes her head, not wanting to fall into this again. “Like we were last time?”

Damon just chuckles. It’s not a hidden chuckle, like under his breath or anything. “We had fun, and you know it.” But then his eyes grow more serious. “But you were young then. Scarcely more than a child. It’d be better now. I like my women older.” He looks her up and down. “More mature.”

“That’s very helpful,” Elena says, her voice with no small amount of bite as his words forcibly remind her of the other lovers he’d had that weren’t her. Andrea Starr. Matt’s mom. Hell, she’d seen him eying up Jenna once or twice before she and Alaric got together. Didn’t matter how often he denied it; Elena knows what she saw and this kind of comment backs it up.

Her heart pangs, and she knows she’s got a long way to go before she can call that hurt a secret held in a hidden heart.

“I’ve got to go,” she says, starting to turn away. It no longer matters to her whether it appears like she has done her job.

Damon stops her, grabbing her. His strong fingers are around her slim wrist, and it’s a long moment before Elena can do anything but stare down at where they are in contact. A long moment until she looks up from her wrist, into his eyes.

There is no front in them. They are looking into her, honest, expressive, looking at her in the way he had when she first realised she’d fallen in love with her.

“Break up with Cody.”

Just like that. And Elena wants to. Wants to give into whatever he asks. And isn’t that what brought her here in the first place?

She pulls her wrist out of his hold and, surprisingly, he lets her.

“No.” Elena shakes her head, almost desperately. She knows she’s not in love with Cody. She knows, too, that they’re just friends who are enjoying each others’ company. From her side, that’s all it is. That’s safe. But he doesn’t know that. And he doesn’t need to.

She doesn’t ask him how she knows who Cody is, or what his name is. This should surprise her but, after so long around him in her late formative years, Damon having knowledge he shouldn’t doesn’t faze her anymore. What fazes her is the question. The directness of it, the content of it. The placement of it happening the day after Cody asked her essentially to start dating him.

Damon nods once. He stands, and Elena steps back a couple of paces in order to give him all the room he needs to go without coming into physical contact with her. Blatantly, he refuses that offer. He’s taller than she is, though he doesn’t tower over her like Cody does. Her eyes can’t seem to find any other place of purchase other than his eyes.

He extends a hand out, and cups her jaw in the palm of his hand. God help her, but all she wants to do is lean into it. She tries to shake herself out of it, but not before he speaks again.

“I’ll be seeing you,” he informs her. A glint enters her eyes. “Can’t stop thinking of that kiss in the bar.”

Leaving that memory fresh in her mind, Damon turns from her and promptly exits the diner. Elena feels like all the breath has been punched out of her. She casts a desperate eye around to the customers at tables she hasn’t bussed yet, sure that they’ll be impatient by now, but not able to make her legs move any faster. They felt a little bit like the consistency of jelly.

Dammit.


	5. Chapter 5

**Flashback.**

She couldn’t take him to the lake house. That place was flavoured forever with memories of Stefan and Elijah and Klaus, as if the memories of her parents hadn’t been enough.

But Damon had a solution for that. He had more than a couple of hidey-holes hidden away for romantic gestures.

“Romantic gestures?” Elena had asked him, one eyebrow firmly lifted.

“Yes.” Damon lifted his chin, as if this slander upon his ‘good name’ was not even to be borne. Then he inclined his head. “Alright, so this is the first time I’ll be using one of these places for _only_ that reason...”

“Uh _huh_ ,” Elena said, as though that explained all.

It was an argument she would forget moments later when Damon picked her up, spun her around with a growl, and then kissed her so thoroughly that all other thoughts flew straight out of her head. It was always like this with them. Passionate. Heightened. She thought that she remembered some of this at the beginning of her and Stefan’s time together, but that was all so confused with finding out that he was a vampire, and her own sexual inexperience. This time, the two of them, it was unblemished. Apart for the occasional time when passion would bubble over into passionate arguments.

But Elena wasn’t thinking about that right now.

The place he’d brought her to was a little cabin in the middle of nowhere. Bright flowers all over the front—none of them vervain—vines creeping the dark brick. Damon kept her held in his arms, and carried her over the threshold. Elena felt a frisson shudder up her back.

“Cold?” Damon asked.

Elena started to respond, ‘No, but...’ when she looked into his eyes. The twinkle she found there told her he knew exactly that it wasn’t cold that had caused the shiver to go through her.

“ _No,_ ” she said, more forcefully.

“Are you sure?” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively. “Cause I could warm you if...”

Elena took a deep breath. “You’re not going to show me around?”

Damon’s lips curved into a playful smirk. “Of course,” he said, and proceeded to show her around, never letting go physical contact with her.

*

Damon’s having a drink on his own. He’s not one for thinking in terms of regrets. Usually, it’s been his habit to keep acting so fast and often that he doesn’t have time for reflection.

The only exception in his long life has been the last seven years. Seven years, and a handful of years before that, when his whole attention has been focused on this one woman. Even when he was mindlessly following on the trail of Katherine, he’d been _doing_ things.

When he left Mystic Falls, it had been in mind of getting back to that sort of Damon that he recognised. Maybe he didn’t need to kill in such great quantities, or so viciously, to be that Damon. Damon had snark, he had charm, he had an ability to seduce that was unparalleled. It wasn’t that he thought highly of himself, he just wasn’t held down by false modesty that most people seemed to be shackled with.

He didn’t know when he realised he was headed towards L.A., didn’t know when he’d realised he didn’t care, didn’t know when he’d started to make a plan for finding Elena. For what he would say when he saw her for the first time. How he’d intrigue her, have her coming to him and realising that she couldn’t stay away from him, when it was really him who couldn’t stay away from her.

The kiss had been unplanned, and he hadn’t been kidding when he’d told her that he’d hardly been able to think of anything else since. Hence what he was doing back at the same bar. Amy had been _very_ helpful in reassuring him that it was their Thursday night hang out and, as today was Thursday, they would indeed be back.

That night is another fun night at a bar, but a little less of the liquid ‘fun’ than Elena last indulged in. She doesn’t lose her way to or from the bathroom, she doesn’t randomly fall into mens’ arms and mistake them for Cody.

When Damon makes his presence there known, Elena is full-heartedly aware of it.

“What are you doing?” she hisses.

Damon raises his eyebrows as though she’s the one doing something wrong.

“Hey!” This is Amy, coming towards him with a broad smile on her face, evidently having missed Elena’s little hiss. “You made it!”

Damon opens his arms wide. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world!” he says, and is rewarded with an unreserved hug for his trouble. For a moment, he meets Elena’s eyes over Amy’s shoulder. When she pulls back, he ensures he has an appropriately hopeful look on his face.

Amy takes him under her wing, as though it’s been scripted between them. “Damon, this is Cody, and you already know Elena, of course...” Amy drifts off, uncomfortable for a minute as though she’s just realised that she might be overstepping the bounds of friendship here a bit.

But then Cody is stepping forward to shake his hand, and the moment passes. “Good to meet you, mate. How do you know our Elena here?” He puts an arm around Elena’s shoulders. Damon waits a beat, but Elena doesn’t move or seem to have been made uncomfortable by this proprietal contact. Damon wants to punch him. He shakes himself mentally.

“We grew up in the same small town together,” he says once more, offering one of his winning smiles.

“You don’t say!” Cody turns his gaze towards Elena, who has by now pasted an almost authentic smile on her features. Damon notes that Amy, and especially Cody, don’t seem to know her well enough to see the difference. “You didn’t say you grew up with such good looking people.”

There might be an edge of jealousy to his voice. If he’s asking roundabout whether they’ve dated, it’s a clumsy way of doing it.

“It didn’t come up,” Elena answers, having none of it. Now she pushes a little bit at the arm that’s been slung around her shoulders, and Damon keeps his expression carefully from changing. This will be too easy if Cody helps him in drawing the two of them apart.

“Drinks?” Damon asks, cheerfully.

Cody gives a distracted nod, and Amy gives a broad grin.

“If you’re buying!” she says.

Elena comes with him, and Damon waits for the inevitable explosion.

None comes. Damon dares a glance across in her direction while the bar staff are serving other customers. His lips curve gamely. “Nothing to say?” he asks, eventually.

“Nope,” she answers.

A disbelieving eyebrow raise. “Nothing. Not a cross word...?”

“Not a cross word. Nothing.”

A bar man comes to serve them, smiling as he recognises Elena.

“What I can I get you?” he asks.

“A scotch and coke. Three. Actually, hold the coke, and make sure that it’s one of your finest scotches.” Elena levels a look at Damon, before adding to the bartender, “It’s on him.”

The bar man’s gaze swings towards Damon, and he pulls a thin lipped grin. “You heard the lady,” he says. Elena leaves the bar to go back to her friends, after having cost him nearly $60. “Put it on my bar tab,” he says, only barely suppressing a wince. He’s been in it for expenses like this before when he’s killed, almost killed, or otherwise pissed Alaric off.

The bar man wisely refrains from asking questions. When he walks back to Elena and her friends, he’s grateful for his vampire dexterity that makes his carrying four glasses of scotch no big deal.

Amy sees him before any of the others do, and gets up. “Do you need help? Elena, how could you leave him to bring these all back on his own?”

Even as she helps him, her eyes meet with Elena’s and some obvious girl code passes between them, causing Amy to go silent on any further outrage. Elena is sitting next to Cody, bearing his arm around her shoulders again.

“Here you go,” Damon says, handing to them both the scotch’s Elena commanded bought, and managing not to make a fuss about it.

“So Damon,” Cody starts. “What do you do?”

Damon gives another of those fake smiles for people he has no time for but can’t kill. “Well, Cody,” he starts, leaning forward, noting the way that Elena watches on cautiously. “I’m closely tied with law enforcement.” It’s close enough to the truth that Elena won’t call him out on it, close enough for most of the last decade to be the way he represents himself now.

“What, you mean like, a consultant, or something?” Cody takes a drink of his scotch, then grins. “You’re not a psychic consultant, are you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Damon said, straight faced, before remembering his game smile and inserting it in with a benign, “Of course not.”

“Damon’s good at helping out with small town problems,” Elena remarks. The psychic comment is a low shot, and he knows she won’t go for that as it’s too close to deprecating Bonnie. Small towns, however, she has no problem with emphasising.

Amy looks between Elena and Damon, plainly still trying to catch a beat on the undercurrents going on here. “So... is this your first time in a big city?” she asks him.

Damon shakes his head. “L.A.’s one of my old haunts,” he answers, smiling when Elena can’t quite hide her surprise at something she didn’t know about him. There’s a lot you don’t know about me, he thinks in her direction. Seven years is a short time against 150.

“Oh?” Amy sees the surprise in Elena’s expression, and takes it as permission to continue. “How long’s it been since you were last here?”

“Not since the 80s,” Damon says. Then, for Cody and Amy’s benefit, adds, “I was really young.”

“You must have been,” Amy notes. “You don’t look any older than your mid-20s!”

“Does anyone else want another drink?” Elena asks quickly. Damon leisurely sips from his scotch, amused with her discomfort over the inconsistency of the age he appears and him having been in L.A. in the 80s. He notes that, of all of them, Elena’s the only one to have finished her glass. Cody’s only half way there, and Amy hasn’t drunk even that much.

Damon finishes his glass in a gulp, only passing a sparing thought to finishing good scotch in such a non-appreciative way. Elena comes with him to the bar, bristling next to him the whole way.d

“Now?” he asks, idly.

“What are you doing?” she demands.

“I’m making nice. With your friends. If you don’t want me doing that...”

“This is _nice_?” she asks.

“Elena.” His eyes go deadly serious for a moment, before picking up with a deliberate show of a smile. “You know me. This is nice.”

She pales. Then grapples together for her game face. Amy is walking up behind them. Damon recognises the sound of her foot falls.

“Thought I’d come over and make sure I couldn’t help out bringing drinks back. You know, since Elena walked back on her own last time.” She looks between the two of them, and obviously the tension hasn’t been masked quickly enough this time for her to miss it. “Is everything okay here?” Amy asks.

“Fine,” Elena returns shortly and, again, starts to walk away from the bar.

Amy shoots an apologetic glance Damon’s way, before following after Elena.


	6. Chapter 6

**Elena.**

Elena bursts into the woman’s bathroom, followed closely behind by Amy.

“Okay, what gives? Something gives, okay” Amy purses her lips, as if trying to figure out what’s going on.

Elena moves straight to the basin and cups water in her hands, before running her fingers through her hair with an air of distraction.

“I... thought it might be okay to go after Damon. I mean... you’re with Cody but... if you don’t want me playing around...”

“What?” Elena spins around from the bathroom mirror. She’s a terrible friend. With Damon taking up so much of her focus, she hadn’t even noticed that Amy was making a play for him. “No,” she says quickly. “You can’t! You just... can’t.” She realises belatedly that she has no way of backing this up with good reason.

Thankfully, Amy doesn’t press her for one. At least, not immediately. “Okay. Okay, that’s fine.” She peers at Elena’s flushed face through the mirror. “Is that all that’s going on? We’re friends, Elena. You can tell me stuff.”

But Elena shakes her head. “Not this stuff. Damon just comes from a time... It’s weird to have him here.” She ducks her head, staring into the basin if only for a way of avoiding Amy’s gaze.

“I get that. There are heaps of people from my past that I wouldn’t want clogging up my life here. It’s like... they drag you back into that time that you’re trying to grow up from, right?”

“Exactly like that.” Elena charges up the courage to look away from the basin, to even turn around and face Amy directly. “Sorry, I should have said something to you earlier. You must have been thinking I was acting so strange.”

To that, Amy scoffs. “It’s you, Elena. Not that strange.”

In retaliation, Elena extends her arm in a faux punch, and Amy giggles before hitting her back. Moments later, the two of them leave the bathroom, and go to find where Cody’s sitting.

He’s on his own at their table. Four glasses of scotch—two new, two half drunk—sit with him at the table.

“Damon went outside to answer a phone call,” Cody says by way of explanation.

Elena just nods once, gazing despite herself in the direction of the bar’s exit. Then she looks back to her new drink on the table. She’s going to have to drink this one more slowly, she thinks. Otherwise, she’s going to get drunk straight under the table. While Damon’s around, she knows from experience that it’s a good thing to have all her wits around her.

 **Flashback.**

Elena spent lots of time, various places with Damon, wondering what it would be like to be like this forever with him. Granted, in the first few years she’d known him, she’d never imagined him as a forever kind of guy.

But, even then, there’d been evidence for her—had she wanted to see it—that pointed to his staying power. His loyalty to Katherine, for one. His pursuit of Stefan, for another, no matter how Stefan had railed against that pursuit and Elena had followed in kind.

Being the loved one of Damon, above even his brother, brought her to the fore of that devoted attention. She used to think that the day would never come that she would be so happy, without vampire attacks, or curses, or doppelgangers coming to intrude on her happiness. But, there was something about Damon. Something that had people loathe to go against his wishes.

Sometimes, she even felt it at play with her.

“What are you thinking?”

He hunched down beside her with virtually no warning, even gazing off in the direction in which Elena had been vacantly staring.

“Nothing...” she said, but after a pause, one that told Damon unconditionally that she was lying.

“Ahh..” He sighed, never moving his gaze away from the nothing they were both now staring at. “We could do this together, forever, you know. You and me.”

Sometimes, Elena swore that he read her mind. She looked at him sharply as he did it this time, but Damon just continued staring straight forward.

“W-what do you mean?” The attempt at the question took her two tries to get out. Truthfully, she was afraid that he would simply voice more of the thoughts that were running through her head, but they would be so much worse to be heard from him.

Damon shrugged, as if the content of this conversation didn’t matter, which was a lie, of course. Everything mattered to Damon. Things had a way of mattering to him more than most.

“I would protect you, you know. I’ll always protect you.” And then he was looking at her directly, and she couldn’t look aside from that piercing, blue gaze.

Elena nodded once, twice. “I know.” He’d demonstrated it so many times, the words were superficial.

Damon gazed between her two eyes, clearly looking for something that wasn’t there yet. “You don’t,” he answered. He let her eyes go for a second, lowering his eyes till he took her hands in his.

They were surprisingly warm, Elena thought. He must have fed recently, and not from her. He still did that. Mostly, she didn’t ask about it. They had a silent agreement that he wouldn’t kill. Asking would constitute lack of trust.

“I don’t want to lose you.” And his gaze was holding hers again, securely, from his first word. “I don’t ever want to lose you.”

Elena opened her mouth to say something trite. ‘You won’t’, or, ‘I don’t want to either’, or something like that. She didn’t though. She didn’t pretend not to know what he was talking about. Didn’t do either of them the disservice of pretending ignorance.

“Damon, I...” She was shaking her head. Continuing with this conversation was going to lead them to places that she didn’t want to talk about. Not with him. She’d already had those conversations with Stefan, and Stefan had been difficult enough to refuse. She didn’t know if she had the ability to resist Damon if he really pushed it.

Slowly, she slid her hands out of his. Surprisingly, he let her. Again, his gaze dipped, curiously, as though wanting to see what she did next.

“I don’t want forever.” She couldn’t look at him as she said this, so she didn’t. Her words were soft, like they couldn’t be argued with if they were soft.

It worked, at least for a little bit. Damon waited for her, didn’t say anything immediately.

“I... don’t want to be a vampire,” she said. “It’s not about you. It’s about me.”

Seconds, moments, hours after that statement, after he didn’t say anything, Elena looked up again.

His expression was a kaleidoscope of pain, rage, fear and a study of control trying to overcome those other emotions.

They weren’t under control when Damon opened his mouth to speak. “You’ll get ill.” There was steel in his voice, and certainty, as well there might be. Elena wasn’t unversed in the way the world worked, or the ways that humans died.

“I don’t want to watch everyone else die except for me,” she said quietly.

“You _won’t_ ,” Damon forced. “You’ll have me.” His eyes were widening, like he couldn’t understand how that wouldn’t be enough.

Desperately, clearly feeling he was losing her, he reached out his hands, to take hers again, but Elena stood up. Without thought, without Elena’s eyes being able to follow it, Damon was standing too. She could feel the pressure of his hands grasping her shoulders.

“Damon...” she uttered. “You’re hurting me.”

As she gazed at him, she wondered at why she was arguing this. Had she known it would end this way? End? But this was just a conversation they were having.

“Damon,” she said, trying to reach him again.

He slumped, turned his intense gaze from her to the ground beside her feet. Slowly, achingly, he released her shoulders from his hold.

She didn’t move a step away from him.

“Sure.” And Damon shrugged his shoulders, summoning a smile that was that show smile for others he has no time for, but can’t kill. It’s not a smile for her. Never for her. “Whatever, we’re cool.”

But there’s a chink in his armour, and they can both see it. Just... neither of them spoke about it.

*

She talked about it to Alaric about it, without ever knowing if Damon did too. Before she knew it, she was sobbing, and he was holding her. She was holding onto him as though he was the only thing stopping her from falling into a great, dark abyss.

“I can’t... I can’t do this. I’m going to have to leave. Leave... him.”

*

The conversation isn’t the most witty she’s had with Cody and Amy. Maybe that’s a result of the fine scotch they are drinking. Elena wonders, watching them, if there’s an expectation of such good scotch, when drunk, not to be slobbish about it.

“Oh look, Damon’s back.”

“Really? I thought for sure he’d headed off after his phone call.” Cody sounds less than pleased at the sight of Damon’s return. Elena can understand that, having had Amy point out already how strange she’s been acting. To reassure him, she leans into him, kisses him gently and with promise for what the rest of the night might hold.

And that’s how Damon, and Alaric behind him, finds her.

Elena blinks, after pulling away from Cody.

“That’s alright.” Alaric holds up his hands peacefully, wearing a smile that Elena still remembers fondly. “Don’t stop on my account.”

Damon grins broadly, obviously enjoying this much more than Elena is. “Hey, look who I found out in a back alleyway!”


	7. Chapter 7

**Alaric.**

He can’t help but notice Elena’s not as happy to see him there as she puts a face on and pretends. For now, they’re both just going to have to front. Aside from everything else, there are two humans here who Alaric has to assume don’t know about the Secret Side of Damon.

At least, Alaric thinks, they’re not more high schoolers.

So Alaric does the only thing he knows how to do. Well, not the _only_ thing, but this isn’t really a situation that requires history or books. “Drinks, anyone?”

He realises, a second later when he looks down at the table, that drinks are already well taken care of.

Still, Damon grins. “Drinks? A wonderful idea!” and leads him towards the bar, but not before Alaric’s ears pick up one of Elena’s new friends saying, “More friends from where you used to live?”

“Fantastic timing. I thought it was providence, myself, when you called,” Damon is saying.

“What are you doing here?”

Alaric turns on Damon and, for a moment, it is almost ten years ago in Mystic Falls; Damon full of crazy ideas and ways of getting on top of Katherine or other vampires/werewolves/hybrids and Alaric cautioning him to take a step back, to think.

Damon widens his eyes, in that way that Alaric just _knows_ is asking or trouble. “Why, getting a drink at the bar, Ric. Or didn’t you remember that you just offered to buy the round? Same again. On him,” he adds, when the bar tender catches their eyes.

“I don’t mean here at the bar, Damon. I mean here in L. A. I mean here with Elena’s friends, in Elena’s life again. It’s clear you’re intruding.”

“Is it, Ric?” This time Damon’s voice is decidedly less friendly.

Alaric sighs. It’s been a while since they were close and Alaric is quite a bit rusty. “Tell me at least you talked to her. Up front. Not in front of her friends. And you asked her about Cody?” Alaric could have pretended to struggle to remember the name of the boy Damon had mentioned to him but, if he’s honest with himself, the name has been burned in his memory since Damon said it.

“Of course I did.” Some of the frown lines clear from Damon’s face and Alaric realises that his former best friend doesn’t want a fight. If he did, he wouldn’t have backed down so easily. “What do you take me for?”

“I take you for Damon,” Alaric replies, and it’s about that time that he’s called upon to pass money across the bar for their drinks, which puts a pause on their conversation that Alaric resumes only a moment later. “What did she say?”

Even before Damon answers, Alaric’s pretty sure it’s something positive from the way that Damon’s acting. None of the insecurity from that phone call a week before is visible now.

“If you must know, she said she wouldn’t break up with him,” Damon answers, which is a shock to Alaric that Damon doesn’t bother to answer before he’s heading back to the table.

Alaric makes the assumption that the man with his arm around Elena, the one who made the comment about Alaric being another figure from Elena’s past, is Cody.

“I’m sorry,” he says, both to Cody, and to the girl who’s smiling shyly at Damon across the table. “We haven’t been introduced. My name’s Alaric Saltzman.”

Cody’s eyes widen. “That name’s a mouthful, dude,” he answers.

“Don’t I know it,” Alaric answers, though he knows his name is always a fantastic conversation opener. “You can call me Ric.”

“Cody.” He leans forward from Elena slightly, using the arm that’s not around her to shake Alaric’s hand.

“And this is Amy,” Damon says, gesturing with one of his two drinks to introduce Ric to Amy.

“She works with me,” Elena interjects, perhaps a little too sharply. As Alaric glances up at her, he can see that she feels poorly for not being the one to head the introductions around the table.

Alaric tries to offer her a smile that shows his understanding of the difficulty of the situation, though he’s not sure that it works. “Uh huh,” he says, determined to keep this conversation on even keel, and accessible for everyone. “What’s work like?”

“It’s like any waitressing job,” Amy replies with a shrug. “Bussing tables, trying not to cop too much ’tude for the amount of tips you’re getting. That sort of thing.” She waits a beat, then, “What do you do?”

“History teacher,” Alaric answers. “Which... is about as interesting as it sounds.”

He’s got a half-smile curving his lips, but this conversation is about to get real awkward real quick. Looking around the table, he can make out the dynamics pretty clearly. Amy trying not to show an interest in Damon, for whatever reason. Damon encouraging it with flirty glances and comments made specifically to her. Elena prickling, but trying not to, and Cody... Cody’s taking turns glaring at Damon, glancing askew at Alaric, and giving looks of concern to Elena.

“Shucks, it’s been a long drive to get here,” Alaric says, trying to cut through the tension. “It’s really taken it out of me. Where are you staying, Damon?”

Damon looks at him steadily, but answers noncommittally. “A hotel around here.”

“Mind if I crash the night?” Alaric makes a show of looking at his watch, though he knows the time is already just past eleven. “Think most of the hotels will be closed at this time of night. I’ll make arrangements tomorrow.”

Damon’s eyebrows lifted incrementally at that. “You’re planning on staying?”

“Well, it’s rare that I get to see two of my best friends in the one city at the same time,” Alaric says, leaving the sentence open-ended, and full of double speak. Damon doesn’t miss the message that Alaric is here to watch over things, and Alaric doesn’t expect him to. The interesting thing would be what he did with that information.

Damon doesn’t disappoint. “You can stay. But you’re on the floor,” he answers.

“I’ve slept on worse,” says Alaric.

He turns away from Damon to find Elena talking to Cody. Then Cody stands. “We’re gonna head,” he says and Alaric tries to meet Elena’s eyes, but she’s looking at the floor, while deliberately holding onto Cody’s hand.

Alaric stands. Damon doesn’t do her the same courtesy. In fact, he seems at least 50% darker than he was even in acceding to have Alaric stay at his place.

“Will I get to see you sometime soon?” he asks of Elena, forcing her gaze to lift.

She hesitates but, “Sure. The day after tomorrow. I’ve got it off.”

“Great,” Alaric says, wisely deciding to leave it at that, before Cody decides he wants to invite himself to join them. Alaric’s not actually sure that Cody won’t still do it, but he offers Cody a friendly smile, before sitting down again beside Damon.

“See you tomorrow?” Elena asks of Amy.

“Count on it,” Amy replies, raising a glass to her.

*

Damon shoves Alaric against the front door with a bang that Ric is sure near neighbours would have heard.

“Might wanna be careful of that,” he murmurs.

“What are you doing here?” Damon growls.

“You mean aside from saving your ass? A little thanks wouldn’t go astray.” Alaric replies, with equal heat. At Damon’s non-comprehending look, Alaric extrapolates, “Elena left you, Damon. She _left_. And you coming in all ham-fisted isn’t going to get her back.”

Damon’s jaw juts out, but he steps back, releasing Alaric’s shirt as he does so. “What do you suggest?” he asks, after an extended silence.

*

Having already had some of this conversation with Elena, Alaric already stacked up on alcohol before coming to visit Damon at the boarding house. From what he could gather, Damon hadn’t been seen out in town since the breakup. But nobody seemed to think he’d left Mystic Falls either.

Stefan left the boarding house as Alaric walked in.

Damon was alone in his room. He didn’t even move when Alaric walked in from the bedroom door.

“Afternoon delivery at Salvatore residence,” Alaric opened, trying for humour, and watching it fall flat.

“Really not in the mood today, Ric,” was Damon’s answer.

Alaric took another step into the room. “Come on, Damon.” And then he doesn’t really know what to say after that.

If this was someone else, almost anybody else, he’d give them the soft comfort. He’d offer empty platitudes of it being alright, of time healing, or them taking as much time as they needed. But Damon? Damon taking ‘as much time as he needed’ to work out the issues surrounding his and Elena’s break up were likely to result in catastrophic downfall for the residence of Mystic Falls and surrounding counties. As far as Alaric could figure, Damon had only been in love twice in his lifetime, and the first time had lasted almost 130 years with a woman who, for all intents and purposes, looked exactly like the second person he’d fallen for.

“Get up.”

“What?”

Damon was as slow to react as Alaric had ever seen him, and Alaric wasn’t about to take that as an excuse. Not today. Today would set the tone for the way their friendship was about to continue from here.

“I said, get up. Hit me, if you want to, grab the scotch and don’t share any of it with me, but you’re getting up from that bed.”

Damon stared at Alaric for a very long time, long enough that Alaric tried to brace himself for Damon flying across the room and slapping him back hard enough that he ended up in the hall, with a broken bottle of scotch all over him. He really should have thought this over more thoroughly before presenting Damon with that option.

But, “What year?” was all Damon asked.

To which Alaric answered, “1956,” and realised he’d already done exactly what he should do with this friend of his.

As they shared the incredibly aged bottle of scotch, Damon began to say things. Slowly at first, almost like it pained him to admit it, as though it would have the effect of making things more real.

“I really screwed up, Ric. I don’t know how to undo it.”

“What did you do?” Best to hear it from Damon’s side, Alaric decided.

“I pushed her. I pushed her away.”

“She’s young. Barely even a kid. Who even knows what they want at that age,” Alaric offered, trying to sound the voice of comfort.

“She knows she doesn’t want to become a vampire. She made that quite clear.”

“Time,” Alaric answered.

Damon lifted his head. Red-rimmed eyes stared into Alaric’s cooler ones. He wondered if Damon would be able to tell that Alaric too had been crying—spent over seeing Elena wracked in so much pain—and decided he could, if he was paying any attention. Any attention at all to the smell of salt tears not quite washed away, or keen eye sight that would pick up the traces of red around his eyes that still remained.

But he didn’t say anything and so Alaric was able to pretend it hadn’t occurred.

“Let her grow. It might give her the perspective to change her mind. Or it might give you the perspective to change yours. Either way, you can’t stop her leaving. You’d best make the best of it.”

They drank a lot of scotch that night. It was perhaps their most expensive night thus far.

*

Damon comes back into the living room with a pillow and a blanket, both of which Alaric nimbly catches when they are thrown at him.

“Thanks,” he murmurs though, from the expression on Damon’s face, his friend’s thoughts are far from Alaric’s gratitude.

Damon sits heavily on the couch beside Alaric. Still, it’s a long moment before he speaks.

“You never left me.”

“What?” Alaric’s shock is clear on his face as he searches Damon’s expression. The vampire doesn’t turn to look at Alaric, so Alaric’s stuck staring at his profile.

“I left you. Left you to drink by yourself, left you to fend for yourself in Mystic Falls. Don’t know how you forgave me for that.”

“I’ve yet to get you back for it,” Alaric says, recognising that Damon’s making a joke, and taking care to play along.

Damon’s smile is quick and doesn’t reach his eyes, which narrow as he continues gazing forward. “I’ve lived for too long for this.”

There’s a lot there that Damon isn’t saying, and Alaric doesn’t know how to get Damon to open up and get into any of that. Getting Damon to open up had never been Alaric’s gift. Staying quiet, or with the occasional comment to let him know he was still listening, while Damon wore himself out with his own realisations, now that was much more Alaric’s style.

“There’s not enough alcohol for us to be having this conversation.”

Before Alaric can point out that there is an almost full bottle of spirits in his pack, Damon is standing and crossing the room to a liquor cabinet in a cupboard. Of course. Damon is the only friend Alaric’s ever had that has more alcohol standing by ‘just in case’.

Damon lifts the bottle up in an offering to Alaric.

Doesn’t mean that having that amount of alcohol is a good thing. The whole ride over here, Alaric told himself that the alcohol was there to calm Damon down, if that bribery was needed. He himself had given up drinking like that years ago.

“Suit yourself,” Damon says, taking a long swig from the bottle before swinging it down as if it was a glass he held, and not the entire bottle.

Alaric hazards a guess. “Things not going so well on getting Elena back, then.”

It’s not a guess, really.

“That was never the plan, Ric,” is what Damon surprises him by saying. And, as Alaric’s brow furrows with the question waiting to be asked, “The plan was to get the three of us standing in the same state together again.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Flashback.**

 

The car was packed. Bonnie was flushed in the wake of her last hug with Elena. Caroline stood two steps behind her, hugging her arms around her like, if she didn’t, she would collapse into Elena for another goodbye hug that would leave them both sobbing.

“I’ll call when I can. I’ll write all the time,” Bonnie promised. “This isn’t goodbye.”

“I know you will. And this isn’t,” Elena said, with a smile for both Bonnie and Caroline that she was far from feeling. Since she was the one leaving, she could do at least this much. “And I’ll call you as soon as I arrive.”

Bonnie stepped back, near Caroline, who reached out to take her hand, holding it tightly. Too tightly for a moment there, if Bonnie’s expression of momentary pain was anything to go by.

Jeremy was next, managing to be much more stoic than the girls. “You better call,” he said into her ear as he drew her close. “Otherwise I’m going to have two hysterical girls in my living room while you live it up interstate.”

“Hey!” Caroline cried from behind him, having picked up his words with vampire hearing. A moment passed, in which Caroline explained to Bonnie what Jeremy had just said, and then Caroline’s ‘Hey’ was echoed by an equally indignant one from Bonnie.

“I’ll _call_ ,” Elena reaffirmed. “Okay?”

Jeremy just gave one of his enigmatic shrug and grins. Alaric was the next one to say goodbye to. Elena took a deep breath on this one. 

“You’ll take care of him?” Elena said to him quietly, and this time Caroline kept to herself the words she could hear with benefit of her vampire hearing. 

Alaric bobbed his head just once. “I will. Won’t be easy though, after you’re gone.”

Elena blinked a couple of times, near tears all over again with these words. 

“Hey..” Alaric frowned, reached out with his thumb towards her cheek. Elena gave a little hiccupping sound that was meant to show her keeping tears at bay. It didn’t very much sound like she succeeded. “Just as long as you’re okay, alright? Damon’s a big boy. He can handle this. You’ve been in relationships with one or the other Salvatore brother since you were 17. You _deserve_ to find yourself.”

Elena sniffed, than stiffened her back, as her original purpose was given back to her by him. “Thanks, Ric.”

“Anytime,” he said. “ _Any_ time. You’ve got my number?”

“And Jeremy’s. And Bonnie’s. And Caroline’s,” Elena said, for what must have been at least the sixth time since she’d packed her car up.

“Right then.” And then Alaric was stepping back from her too, not quite so far back as the others, but far enough back so as to make a point. “We’d best let you go.”

“Goodbye, Elena. Safe driving!” Bonnie called out. 

“Don’t you dare drive dangerously!” Caroline echoed. “Or I’ll find you, and I’ll kick your ass!”

As the girls were giving away these final waves, and Jeremy just lifted his hand in a goodbye salute, Alaric turned towards the side of the Gilbert house, movement having given away Damon’s position in her periphery. Damon lifted his chin when he saw Alaric staring. Lifted his chin, then resumed watching Elena get into her car, pull out of the drive way, and drive away. 

Then he left.

*

“It’s ridiculous, to be a hundred and some year old vampire who has an attachment to a human.” Damon stares into his bottle of brandy as though it holds some sort of a secret to his ‘eternal’ existence. “Of course she needed to find herself. She’d barely begun living when we found her. We’d already been around for 150 years.”

“Where are your glasses?” Alaric asks. Damon turns a sloe-eyed expression towards him, then slowly smiles.

“Bottom cupboard, towards the left. ’Atta boy,” he congratulates. “Welcome to the Dark Side.”

“Anyone ever tell you you’ve spent far too much time catching up on popular culture to be the bad ass vampire you continue to represent?” Having got his glass, he extends his arm, coaxing with his fingers, for the brandy to be passed to him.

Damon obligingly does exactly that. “Someone’s gotta make sure they don’t go too far out there with their ‘fantasy’,” he murmurs, flexing his hand that’s free of the bottle of brandy for the first time in almost an hour. “Like that Stephanie Meyer trash. One of us should have had her killed for that junk. Thanks.” He takes another swig of the brandy as Alaric passes it back to him. 

“And yet, there’s another example of vampire falls in love with teenaged human.” Alaric shifts his gaze as he feels Damon’s pinning him. “Or, that’s what I’ve heard, anyway.”

“Must be something there, then,” Damon replies.

Alaric swills the brandy around in his mouth, considering his next words before he says them. “Or maybe it’s the girl in question. Damon, she’s always been a very resourceful girl. Mature in her own right, even before she became an adult. Independent, so much so it was hard to believe sometimes she was still a high school student.”

Damon rolls his head back in Alaric’s direction. “I wondered if you noticed that. Couldn’t help but, could you, living with her as you were, even before Jenna died.” There isn’t any particular bite to his words, but Alaric still prickles.

“What are you saying?” 

“Come _on_ , Alaric. This shit’s gotten old. It’s alright to admit some things.”

“No.” Alaric’s shaking his head and pushing the brandy glass he holds away from him, wondering if this conversation would have occurred if he had have just stayed to his rule of letting Damon drink by himself, wondering how much the brandy had loosened his tone. “She’s my ex-wife’s daughter, Jenna’s niece. I can’t look at her that way.”

“But you see her that way anyway. Deny it all you like, Ric,” Damon adds, before Alaric can refute the statement again. “But think about it: why else would you have come all this way if it wasn’t for Elena?”

“You’re my friend.” Not much of a friend these last years, Alaric’s mind reminds him. “And, frankly, I’m worried about what kind of damage you’ll do while you’re here.”

“To Elena!” Damon laughs, and it grates on Alaric, reminding him of the man who arrived in Mystic Falls just before he did, coming up to him to taunt him about his not-so-dead ex-wife. “So you see, Ric, there is something in what I said.”

“I don’t have to listen to this,” Alaric mutters, turning from Damon and starting to put his bed on the couch together around Damon. 

“It’s alright, Ric,” Damon says. His eyes are starting to droop, and Alaric wonders if he’s reached the point of alcohol consumption that even his vampire constitution can’t keep up. “I don’t mind sharing her with you.”

*

Damon woke up to a crippling pain that started behind his eyes and then sunbursted around his whole head. For a moment, while Damon struggled to actually push a thought through, he wondered if somehow he’d taken his ring off, or left it somewhere, in the course of the events of the night before. Was this the way he was going to die?

“ _RIC_ ,” he screamed, across the apartment, and then fell with a thump off the side of his bed in a vain attempt to avoid the sun as the pain worsened to mind-numbingly terrible with his shout.

Alaric was in Damon’s room, dressed in no more than his underpants, shoving the door aside into the wall opposite. His gaze scoured the room, coming to find Damon cowering beside the bed, staring at his hands in shock.

“Damon?” he asked, incredulously. 

“My ring...” Damon started. “Then the pain is...”

“Your hangover,” Alaric informed him, righteously. “And after the grief you gave me last night, I’d say you deserved it.”

Alaric added another cursory look around the room, just to make sure that nothing was _really_ wrong, before shaking his head and closing the bedroom door sharply in his disgust. 

Damon fingered his ring. Having confirmed that he was not, in fact, dying, he had the overwhelming need to feed. Anything to overcome this awful pain.


	9. Chapter 9

**Elena.**

Elena has come to him, and Alaric appreciates it.

“Thanks for coming, Elena.”

She smiles. In daylight, he notices things about her that slipped by him when he was in the dimly lit bar with her the other night. In his head, then, she’d been the same almost 20 year old girl that she’d been before setting out on her own with the money she’d saved up, and the money that Alaric had snuck into her purse. Seeing her now, Alaric realises that the years have been kind to her, but they are visible, too. Laugh lines as well as stress lines mark her face around the eyes and mouth. Her hair is still long and brown, though not as long as it had been in high school, cut only to halfway down her back now. The brown is streaked with the occasional silver strand. Alaric’s own hair is discoloured more than that, if he’s honest, but his is a lighter shade of brown, so it’s less noticeable. 

“It’s wonderful to see you again, Ric,” Elena says and, for a moment, the roundness of her vowels sounds so much like the remembered timbre of Isobel’s voice—Elena’s mother’s voice—that Alaric catches his breath. 

“Yes, right. Well,” Alaric says, trying to regather himself again. 

They’ve met at a restaurant Alaric’s never been to before. The service is top notch so far and the food doesn’t look that expensive. That’s good because, between them, they’re on a teacher’s salary and a waitress’. 

“So,” Elena says. “Should I ask what you’re doing here in L.A.?”

“No,” Alaric says, with a self-deprecating shake of the head. “I expect that’s fairly self-evident.”

Elena indulges in a little head shaking of her own. “I suppose I ought to be grateful that Damon waited so long before inserting himself into my life again.”

“I expect that’s true as well.” Alaric looks up as a waiter comes to their table. He orders the special on pasta. Elena orders chicken with salad. “Elena, I...”

She holds her hand up. “If you’re going to take the blame for this in some way, don’t,” she forestalls.

“I’m not,” he says, after a short hesitation. “We’ve not been close in the last several years. You leaving him... it kinda changed things.”

There’s a flicker behind Elena’s eyes at this admission, but she covers for it miraculously. Again, Alaric is struck by the similarities between Elena and his ex-wife. Seeing them again in Elena is striking in a way that’s both nostalgic and original, and that’s a thought that Alaric stamps down with all his might, positive that he would never have thought of it on his own if not for his conversation with Damon. 

“I’m sorry for that,” Elena says, picking up the glass of water just to do something with her hands. “I never wanted to damage your friendship with him.”

“And you didn’t,” Alaric is quick to reinforce with her. “ _He_ damaged it. He stopped talking to Stefan, to Liz, to me. That’s why... That’s why I had no idea he was planning on being here before he called me.”

Elena’s eyes light up with something new at that admission. “Oh, that’s what you’re worried about,” she says. “Ric, I don’t blame you for what Damon does. I said that already.”

“I know.” Alaric’s brow furrows. “It’s just... You’ve faced a lot in your life. The least you deserved was a change to get away from it all.”

Elena just smiles. Across the table, she reaches for his hands and takes them in hers. Her hands are warm, and soft where Alaric’s are calloused. It was not always so. Alaric remembers times where he and Damon trained Elena to be able to take care of herself. Over time, her fingers grew to have calluses matching theirs. The fact that they are there no longer is something Alaric takes as a sign that she has chosen the right life for herself. 

He rubs his thumbs over the back of her hands fondly, glad of the time that has passed and the fact that they are not in Mystic Falls when the waiter comes to them with their food and notes nothing about the fact that these two patrons are holding hands. 

They dig into their food, engaging in small talk around mouthfuls, and enjoying companionable silence around that. 

“What’s yours like?” Elena asks, before her fork sails across to his side of the table to steal some of the food off his plate.

His brow furrows, and he mocks ire at her intrusion. “Fair’s fair,” he says, a moment later, when his own fork takes a tour in her plate. 

She is giggling, and that sound is so different to Isobel’s laugh that Alaric is reassured, relaxed into finding it charming. Comfortable. 

“I’ve missed this,” he admits to her. 

Elena grins. “Me too. You were always much more fun when you were smiling.”

Alaric cocks his head. “Are you trying to say to me that I’m not as much fun when I’m not smiling?”

Elena’s brows lift, and she’s opening her mouth to try to find something to refute that statement—or a stubborn or sarcastic remark that will keep the banter going—when the sound of a clearing throat grabs both of their attention.

“Sorry to interrupt, children,” Damon says. He pulls a chair to the side of theirs from the next table over. He smiles, but his eyes remain watchful. “What have I missed?”

“Well, dinner, for starters,” Elena says. With a grin, her fork takes another swipe towards Alaric’s meal. Half-heartedly, he darts his fork in to try to stall her, but she grabs a bit of pasta on the end of her prongs, then seems ridiculously happy at this small achievement. It’s a hard thing to come out on top against her when he likes to see her win.

“What have you been up to?” Alaric asks, turning his gaze from Elena with a small amount of effort.

“Oh, you know, arranging my own meal.” Damon says. Elena stills on her side of the table, Alaric can feel the tension that’s just risen from his side of the table. But then, Damon’s eyebrows give a little wriggle, and Elena gives a little snort.

“You, sir, are never going to change,” she says, gesturing towards him with her fork. 

Damon presses the fingers of his right hand against his chest. “I’m offended to think that you think I should change,” he remarks.

“That depends on the day of the week,” Elena replies, but she’s smiling and so can’t be taken seriously. Alaric realises that she never sounds more like herself—less like her birth mother—than when she’s dealing with Damon. He wonders that he’s the only one likely to have noticed that.

The tension’s defused. Damon relaxes into his seat, encouraged to join in with them despite the meal that only Elena and Alaric are sharing. When the waiter comes around to check on their table, and ask if Damon would like to order anything from the menu, he makes a great show of deliberating before asking for the drinks menu. “If you please.”

“Oh,” Elena groans, after the waiter walks away. Her plate is almost clear, and she’s just finished another mouthful of Alaric’s pasta. “How is my liver going to cope with the two of you around?”

“At least you’re over the legal age to drink this time,” Damon replies.

Alaric snorts. It’s like family, and home, and Alaric’s just a little bit cagey about admitting to himself how much he’s missed all this.

*

 

It seems like the kind of thing she can argue only if she wants to be petty about it. But Alaric’s presence there adds a layer of safety to the situation and soon, without Elena even thinking about it, she’s enjoying her meal with the two men, and the drinks that follow. 

“Don’t look now,” Damon says, his hand reaching out to touch Elena on the arm and draw her attention over to a middle aged waitress who’s doing her best not to pay too much attention to their table. “I think someone’s checking Alaric out.”

“Pssh.” The sound comes immediately from Alaric, across from her. “More likely, she’s looking at the clock and wondering what time we’re going to pay and get out of here. What time is it?” He frowns, and pulls out his own watch. 

Damon’s still leaning towards Elena, who’s doing her own job of doing her best not to pay too much attention to where Damon’s hand is in contact with her, or the way his breath fans across her face when he speaks. “Look at the way he’s trying to distract us. Think we might have struck a nerve.”

Elena chuckles, and Alaric looks up at her ruefully, almost an _Et tu, Brutus?_ moment. 

“We probably should get going,” Elena says. She doesn’t move for a moment, because moving would mean Damon sitting back, relieving her arm of his touch. Then, quickly, she does move, reaching into her bag for her purse, knowing thoughts like that are not to be encouraged. 

Damon retracts his hand. “Well, there is some other place I know that’s always good for a party,” he offers.

“Damon...” Alaric starts, warningly.

“What?” Damon’s eyes are wide, all innocence that Elena guesses probably never worked even when he was human. The interplay between the two men hasn’t changed, even after all these years. Elena giggles as she notes Alaric’s eyes narrowing even as Damon’s wide eyes proclaim false innocence. He turns that gaze on Elena. “Come on, Elena.”

Then her eyes widen too. “What are you suggesting,” she asks cautiously, even as she nods towards the long suffering waitress, who eagerly comes to give them their end of the night bill. 

“Party at my place, of course. Since Alaric’s living there already, and it’s nearby...”

“I don’t know...” Elena starts, having frozen since halfway through his sentence. Actually, she does know, very well. This is a bad idea and it won’t take the doing it to convince her of that. 

“Yeah, Damon. We’ve had a good dinner, let’s just leave it at...” Alaric, ever the peace maker, implores Damon with his eyes.

Damon sits back on his chair, and rolls his eyes. “Party poopers, both of you,” he mutters. “I need to go out and get some better friends.”

“Well, you are creature of the night, as opposed to us creatures of the day,” Elena quips.

“Zing!” Damon replies and, by the seductive curve of his lips, Elena knows he’s not doing trying to convince her to come along with them yet.

Elena looks to Alaric, whose expression is carefully impartial, and as different to Damon’s as can be. She doesn’t want the night to end yet, she’s not ready for it to. Who knows what kind of a mood the next time they all meet each other will find them in. 

“For old times’ sake,” she says in a rush.

“Yes!” Damon says, before Alaric can do or say anything, before even his expression has any time to change.

Still, Elena does look to him, because it matters to her what he thinks of this decision. She doesn’t think that she can handle seeing disappointment, or acknowledgement of the bad decision she knows she’s making, in his eyes.

But none of that’s there. Alaric just nods, smiles gently and says, “Good. Maybe you can convince this Neanderthal that it’s not very polite drinking out of the bottle of every bottle of alcohol in the house.”

“Maybe I can convince you that since you’re staying on my suffrage, that’s not up to you,” Damon jibes quickly.

Elena just follows in behind them, content to listen to their good-natured quibbling.


	10. Chapter 10

Damon.

He may be acting cool on the outside, but on the inside he’s all quivering with joy and turning himself into a bit of a wreck at the idea that Elena, _Elena_ , is finally coming home with him again.

With them, he amends mentally, looking at the way Elena and Alaric are in animated discussion with one another. She’s talking and adding wild gestures into the tale, while Alaric’s chuckling indulgently, and adding his own sarcastic wit to the mix. They are the perfect combination and, for a moment, disgust that she could have left them for all these years joins the joy and the wreck emotions swirling together in his stomach. 

He’s just glad that he only had a nip to drink tonight, barely enough for the girl to need iron tablets in the morning. He doesn’t think these feelings would sit very well on a full stomach.

“Damon? Are you coming?” 

It’s Alaric’s voice that calls him, but it’s Elena’s dark eyes that capture him. Night has always been her most beautiful time. The shadows seem to hug her, adding dark depth to her already gorgeous eyes. The number of times Damon has sunk into them, and he still doesn’t think he could ever get bored of it. 

“You don’t have a key. How would you get in without me?” Damon asks, pushing past them to open up the door to the apartment. 

The three of them walk in and Damon happens to note the tension riding in Elena’s shoulders, might have noticed the tension earlier if he hadn’t been so involved in his own feelings on the matter of her agreeing to come back with him. 

Them. 

And then that’s distracting too, because he remembers part of the conversation he had with Alaric two nights ago, including the part where he said he wouldn’t mind sharing Elena with him. 

“Welcome to my humble abode,” he murmurs. “Alcohol’s over there, couches, the works.”

He frowns, as though he’s trying to remember something when all he’s really trying to remember is how to be comfortable around Elena. It always used to be so easy. Fake it. Feel comfort in the face of her discomfort. Eventually, just be himself. 

“Damon?” The concern in her voice almost undoes him. 

Damon lifts his head, and his brows, as though something’s wrong with her, not him. Middle option it is. 

Behind Elena, Alaric’s also watching him in concern. 

For the first time, Damon realises the mistake it may have been to bring her here. 

Abruptly, Elena nods. “Alcohol, you say.” She turns away from him, and to the cupboard he pointed to. 

She’s only rummaging in there a second or so before Alaric says, “Here, let me help you with that.”

Eventually they are both holding up glasses. Elena is holding a spare one and Alaric is starting to pour scotch into all three. 

“Damon?” Elena says, with a smile that reminds him painfully of her 18 year old self. “You’re not going to join us?”

Frankly, the idea is ludicrous, and Damon goes with that thought to drag him up out of the despondency he’s fallen into with no good reason.

“Of course,” he says, eyebrows lowering over dark eyes, and he steps forward to take the glass—now filled with scotch—from Elena. She grins at him, then turns playfully around to Alaric. 

“Cheers,” she says, chinking her glass first to Alaric’s, then against Damon’s. Alaric’s gaze is not mocking _at all_ as he chinks his only glass against Damon’s. 

*

“So I said, Nice going, you asshole. But, I’m a vampire, so I have this unique opportunity of putting you out of your misery so you don’t have to live a long, long live realising you’re an asshole.”

Elena goggles, with rapt attention. Alaric just takes another drink. These are his two human friends and they are as unalike from each other as they are from him. Damon wouldn’t have it any other way. He’s struggling not to grin even as Elena starts to form her thoughts into words.

“You didn’t,” she gasped, from her tone not quite sure that this is true. 

Damon pauses, hesitates, lets her wonder for a good long moment before grinning widely. “I didn’t.”

“Knew it,” Alaric murmured. 

“Well, aren’t you the...” Damon’s mind blanks on the word, and he shakes his head. “Anyway, boring Alaric aside, I used another vampire trick on him. Compulsion’s a funny thing.” He tips his head towards his drink as though he’s considered leaving the story there.

Elena leans forward and pits her fist on the table between them. “You can’t leave it there! What did you do?”

“Something that caused him as much entertainment as you’re offering now, I wager,” Alaric says, with another drink. 

Damon glares at Alaric. “I had a little fun, yes. Compelled him that he should always put others first, whatever the circumstances. That was a change for his wife.”

“You stayed around and watched him?” Alaric asks, his eyes squinting a little.

Damon shrugs. “Had to do something to _entertain_ myself,” he replies.

Alaric lets his head fall back against the sofa. A low chuckle emits from his throat, and Damon feels unaccountably pleased for himself.

“Me next, me next!” Elena says. Damon grins. She’s always been a light-weight and Damon’s nostalgically pleased to see that not much has changed. She sits up straight, seeming tall as Alaric and Damon are slouching in their seats. Damon’s eyes drink her in. His eyes drift slightly to the side and he sees that Alaric is doing exactly the same thing. “I... work as a waitress,” Elena continues. “Customers come in all the time and expect service like they are the only ones at the diner. I...” Elena changes tack halfway through her thought. Damon sees it in the way her head shifts, and he narrows his eyes. “You know, nothing particularly interesting happened to me during Autumn. And that’s fantastic. That’s why I moved out of Mystic Falls.”

Alaric raises his glass, and what little scotch is left in the bottom of it. “Hear hear,” he says.

Damon blinks a couple of times. “No supernatural stuff. That was the best Autumn for you ever, was it?”

Alaric shifts. “Elena...”

“Yes.” She looks between Damon and Alaric, plainly picking up that something was up, but missing the point of what it was. “Nobody trying to kill me, nobody even coming out during the day when they’re not meant to. A completely safe Autumn, all on my own. Also a very safe Winter, come to think of it. You should both be proud.”

Alaric hangs his head and, frankly, looks anything but. 

Damon grits his teeth. “This must suck for you, then,” he says, bitterness making his voice thick, thicker than normal. 

“Excuse me?” Elena says. 

Damon gestures around his living room, much smaller and less comfy than the one he enjoys in Mystic Falls. “This. Sitting around with old friends. Or are we really old friends, Elena? Now that you’re so happy with your life free of vampires or anything supernatural.”

Elena’s mouth opens and closes but, having realised the difficulty of her present position too late, she has nothing to say now that can fix it. 

“Damon... I’m sorry. I didn’t mean...”

Damon brushes aside her attempt at an explanation with a sharp movement. “Alcohol loosens the tongue, Elena. Especially your tongue. I remember that.” His eyes flash in anger. Their arguments were always passionate.

Elena doesn’t rise to the bait. Her heart starts pounding hard in her chest, echoing throughout the rest of her body. Damon would be able to see it at certain points—her neck, her wrist—even if he couldn’t hear it like a pounding in his own head. It makes him want to lose control, to seize the object of his disquiet.

Alaric stands. “Damon...” He’s clearly trying to grab Damon’s attention, take it away from Elena until he can get control over himself.

“Get out,” Damon says. Not to Alaric; to Elena.

Elena’s lips part with a small, distressed sound.

Damon’s vaguely aware that Alaric’s saying something—“Can’t we talk about this? We’re all adults here”—but Damon tunes him out. His whole focus narrows to Elena, and how she’s not leaving here, but how she’s just so happy to have him not in her life.

“Get out!”

Elena hastens out of her chair, as though strings have pulled her up. “Damon, I’m sorry!” she says, but this time doesn’t wait for a reply before she’s moving around him to get to the front door. 

Alaric stays beside him, trying to stay in contact with Damon—ensure Damon won’t go over the edge and do something even more stupid—without being too obtrusive about it. 

“I’m sorry,” Elena whispers, as she makes her way out the door.


	11. Chapter 11

**Elena.**

She’s crying before she properly closes the door behind her. Hot, wet and silent tears stream down her face seconds after she’s told to leave Damon’s apartment. She was the one who chose to leave Damon last time. There was no drunkenness, no stupid comments made. He took her home and left her on the door step, not inviting himself to come in with her. Both of them knew something had been overstepped and, she thought at the time, he knew that saying something right then would make it worse.

She’d left him anyway. 

It hadn’t been because of him, though. Not _because_ of him, but _for_ her. She wasn’t even sure he knew the difference. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe that was the reason why he exploded at her idle words spoken in drunkenness. She hadn’t been talking about him. She hadn’t been talking about him.

Well, she’s sober now. “Oh god,” she whispers under her breath, when she gets the air to speak. Her feet are leaden, taking the footpath one step at a time without any conscious thought. 

The night was so perfect. Who knew that life could be everything you wanted, complete and idyllic one moment, and then it could all be taken away in the next? Elena had thought she felt that once. The moment that Jenna had stabbed herself in the kitchen just because Stefan and Elena pretended to stop seeing each other had opened Elena’s teenage eyes real wide. But that was nothing compared to this.

Thinking of that, brought Damon’s face to mind. Compassionate and strained, and not a year different in age than he had appeared in his apartment in L.A. She would give anything for that look in his eyes, for that allowance to fall into his arms and sob, and have him hold her. Never mind that he would have been surprised at her gesture back then, with tears making her eyelids heavy, and hardly able to make him out against the background of the Salvatore boarding house. He had apologised to her, and she had told him it didn’t matter.

She had apologised to him tonight, and he had told her to get out of his house. 

Her key fitting into the lock of her own apartment sounded impossibly loud, just as did the sniff and muffled sob that followed. The dark apartment seemed unutterably lonely. She was alone, where she had been surrounded by friends. 

She thought then, with surprise, that Alaric hadn’t come out after her. That produces another round of sobs, and makes Elena suddenly relieved that she lives alone here. 

Her kitchen is messy and her bed is unmade. Suddenly, it is all too much and Elena doesn’t want to have to deal with it all. She crawls into her bed, without rolling the blinds over the windows that will let full sun in in the morning. She cries herself to sleeping on a wet pillow.

**Alaric.**

“She didn’t mean anything by it.”

Alaric’s words are soft, calm. He tries to keep all of the judgement out of it, but isn’t sure how well he succeeds. Mostly, he’s upset that a perfect night has been shattered because of a couple of dumb, not thought out words. 

Mostly he speaks because leaving the silence to charge even one moment longer doesn’t seem like a good idea. 

He pulls out his phone from his pocket and considers sending Elena a quick text message while Damon deigns not to speak. Just something to make sure that she’s alright. Something to let him know that she got home alright. 

He should have gone out after her.

Damon’s glass shatters against the wall, startling Alaric and making him pay attention to the man he’s in the same room with.

“Goodnight, Ric,” is all Damon says and, as Alaric just stares, Damon walks out of the living room, ignoring the broken scotch glass, and the scotch that streaks down the white walls. 

“Goodnight...” Alaric echoes, not even sure he can make another comment without it coming back to haunt him. Clearly tonight is not the night to have this conversation.

With a sigh, Alaric turns to his rumbled bed of a couch. In his mind, there is nothing less appealing to sleep on, and no time when he can think that sleep will be further away from his mind. Still, by rote, Alaric bends over to straighten the sheet, to pick up his pillow from the floor. He glances over to the front door to make sure that it’s locked, moves over to lock it when he finds it unlocked, careful with his feet not to step on any shards of glass. 

Then he goes into the kitchen to see if Damon even _has_ a dustpan and brush, because he may as well clean up the mess tonight, since he’s not getting sleep any time soon anyway. 

**Damon.**

Damon can hear Alaric cleaning away in the living room, the glass chinking giving away what he’s doing. He refuses to get up off his bed to help. Tells himself that, somehow, it’s Alaric’s job anyhow, and he’s just as glad not to be having to deal with it. 

When he returns to the living room, after grabbing the dustpan and brush from the laundry—since Alaric didn’t think to look there and is picking up the larger bits of glass with his fingers—Alaric looks up, but doesn’t say anything.

Together, the two of them wipe up the spilled scotch, and brush up the last of the glass, putting them in a plastic bag to be taken out to the trash the next day.

Before going back to his room, Damon lingers in the doorway to the living room for a bit, looking at Alaric who’s settling himself on the couch. After a moment, the other man meets his eyes. Damon just gives a quick nod of his head, then disappears back into his bedroom.

**Elena.**

“Girl.” Amy spoke in an undertone behind the coffee maker while Elena was keying in a new order. “What happened?”

“What?” Elena looks up, briefly, then goes back to what she was doing. “Nothing happened.”

Amy just raises an eyebrow. “You may be able to fool the customers, and you may be able to fool the boss, but you’re not fooling me. You’re wearing too much make-up, and I can still see the red around your eyes.”

“Just leave it, okay?” Elena asks, moving to query the cook about something, but mostly moving so that she won’t have to fend Amy’s questions any more.


End file.
